The year 2000, man. Plymouth, Massachusettes, dude…
I don’t think I got stoned the first time I smoked a joint behind this kid’s house in the summer of 7th grade, I was just trying to get the older kids to like me. I don’t remember the first time I got stoned, either. I just remember the general time frame of the end of 8th grade when I fell in love with marijuana. at some point, I found my mother’s weed and stole it to get my friend H.C. and all baked out. I know now that it was a pretty low-quality herb, but my friends and I were getting so high we took to calling it Maui Wowee (after what we had seen in the Cheech and Chong films). we built all of these smoking contraptions out of soda cans, tin foil, mountain dew bottles, and whatever else we could tape and glue together. once I got a good bake on, it was like I had discovered the meaning of life, finally and it became my mission to smoke it every day, and I’m pretty sure I pulled that off for about the next 20 years. you can keep getting stoned, but you never get that age 13, schwag Mexican brick weed out of a Dr.Pepper can stoned again. At least, I don’t think so. We got so stoned every day and laughed so hard for hours. It came at a time when I needed to take the edge off of the daily prescribed Adderall I was on, and it worked pretty well for that.
Us little maladjusted white suburban shits had all of these spots in our little South Shore, MA town that all had names. Behind this big dirt mound in the woods was “Teenage Wasteland”( after the Who song) , there was an abandoned garage called the “crack shack” even though crack was never smoked there… my Friends were vocational carpentry students so they built a couple of pretty impressive forts for us to fill with pot smoke. Everything about smoking pot was fascinating: bongs, rolling papers, blunts, glass pipes ect…
My crew used to walk around our little town and smoke weed on different summer cottage porches, one bowl per location. This is what we called the “bake train”. That was just one of the stupid things we did. i had about 10 best friends, and we had nothing to do, but we did that nothing together every day, just getting baked out and play tony hawks pro skater 2 or Crazy Taxi. Skipping art class to hit the ceramic bong hidden in the woods behind the tennis courts near the football field in the woods, or skipping school all together to smoke weed and get good at Tekken.
It’s really weird (in retrospect), one day I got stoned for the first time, and then I was an everyday stoner overnight. there was no transition it was just like a light switch…OK, you’re a stoner now. It worked out because someone in 8th grade is looking for an identity anyway. I don’t even know if I had seen “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” yet, but to a certain degree, I morphed into Jeff Spicoli overnight. It’s pretty sad because I’m not an unintelligent person, but the way I was presenting was as if I couldn’t form a coherent thought. I did enjoy people thinking I was intellectually incapable and then pulling some of that gifted child mojo out of somewhere. I must’ve become a stoner in the spring of 2000, and by the fall I was wandering around the halls of my school and my quaint little beach town on acid, or drunker than piss by a bonfire on a beach somewhere. I did what people do and discovered psychedelic music and the jam band subculture. we all think we’re so unique but there’s always a playbook for all of our shit.
Weed is a gateway drug, that’s a fact… get the fuck out of here with any argument that it isn't, that’s bullshit. ask any junkie how they got into drugs and they’ll probably tell you a story just like this one. you get introduced to the very concept of altered states of consciousness, and you wonder what else is in there (your consciousness), at least i did, so i went on fucking around and finding out. I don’t buy this argument that Marijuana is harmless, i think it’s very harmful to young people, especially young people (and people of any age) who have preexisting mental conditions. I don’t know if it was the weed, the mental illness, or the teen angst but around age 14 i lost all my motivation to do any of the things that would’ve put me in position to have a way more successful adulthood (college, career, all of the societal norms) Even if i went back to getting high, i wouldn’t smoke weed, i’m already anxious enough, thank you.
one day, my parents found a bunch of my homemade pipes, and I told them I was holding them for this kid Steve, I’m not sure if they believed me… I didn’t get in trouble or anything. it wasn’t like that anti-drug commercial with the note inside of the Zig Zag book from mom saying “we have to talk”. I don’t want to give the idea that I blame my parents for the addict I became, I truly think I was predisposed to the condition, and I’d have arrived there some way or another. If you’re going to be an addict, by the time you finish your first real joint, the ship has sailed, there wasn’t any military school or scared straight intervention tactic that was going to prevent the inevitable.
If i was in front of a 13 year old kid getting ready to smoke his first bowl out of some tin foil contraption behind the bleachers or wherever, i think i’d want to present them with some kind of disclaimer like “listen, kid you are going to love this, and rightfully so, but there might be a door that you’re about to open that isn’t at all easily closed…and it is really scary inside that room behind said door. I don’t much think about changing the past, because every part of my experience has both put me where i am, and made me the person i am.
You might not like this, but I think getting stoned every day is immature, and if I have to even have another “this and that weed, medicine bro, get the right strain, bro…blah fuckin’ blah” conversation again I’m going to simultaneously barf and throw elbows around, that shit is so played out. it’s just weed, it grows out of dirt, and you can smoke it…always has, you always could. There isn’t anything particularly interesting or original about smoking pot unless you’re 13, then it’s the bee’s knees. Of course, it should be legal, no substance should be prohibited, it empowers an entire clandestine industry, and where there’s money to be made there’s violence to be had, just ask Al Capone (you may be familiar with the prohibition of alcohol, and the accompanying Tommy gun shootouts).
Weed is crazy now, especially where i live (new york city). its sold in little bodegas and off little TV dinner tables in times square. You can pick up a bag of super powerful THC gummies with your (or mine, i guess) sugar free red bull and pack of Newports. People went to fucking prison for all of the things that happen every day out in the open now, and they are still there.
Get stoned, don’t get stoned… do whatever gets you wherever you want to go, I don’t care as long as you don’t harm anyone…you might harm yourself though, so be careful
“They say it’s a living, we all gotta eat” — Jerry Garcia, “Fire on the Mountain”
Yes, we have reached the part of the blog article where i try to scare up a little bread to keep me comfortable while i create stuff. I’m just saying that i’m doing what i can do while i can do it…maybe what you do is different, and more viable monetarily, maybe you think i should get a job. well, maybe i will but, here’s a couple links that could help me me out, and perhaps you’ll feel pretty good if you click them. i don’t know man, we work with what we’ve got.
if you think the fundraising is jerky, or if you have any opinions about my work please shoot me an email, i’m very responsive: ev.penk7@gmail.com
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